


Milk and honey and moths like tiny spacecrafts

by pepparminten



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:09:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepparminten/pseuds/pepparminten
Summary: The darkness of deep space makes him feel lighter, fuzzier around the edges. He feels almost like he does not exist at all. Like the void inside him is just a part of the darkness outside his window. Like all he is is matter. No body, no mind, no pain.This is what Ben Solo dreams of.





	Milk and honey and moths like tiny spacecrafts

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first thing I've written in more than ten years that I've finished. It's also the first fanfic I've posted in over ten years. Go easy on me, dear readers, if there indeed are any of you. 
> 
> This fic was inspired by a song by Swedish artist Silvana Imam. It's called Nio (Drömmen X Flyktplan) and you can find it on Spotify. It was written while listening to Everywhen by Massive Attack, which set the tone for the fic, I think. It's really good, you should listen to it.
> 
> Anyway. Happy reading, and if you like it, I'd die for some comments and kudos <3
> 
> And sorry for the cheesy title, I suck at titles.
> 
> Minor spoilers for The Last Jedi.

Deep space is quiet. There are no worlds nearby, no star systems, nothing living but their massive fleet, gliding soundlessly through space.  He is standing in front of the window in his quarters on the _Supremacy_. It’s night, or, at least, their decided night in the fabricated day-night-cycle of the First Order. No star to dictate when night falls or morning rises, only the efficient machine of military.

It’s night, anyway. The _Supremacy_ never sleeps, the troopers patrolling in shifts, but there is less activity during night hours and his quarters are so far away from the docks and the lodgings that he hears nothing of it anyway. There are no guards outside his doors like outside Hux’s. He is entirely alone in this far end of the vast ship. 

It’s so quiet. There is only a faint hum from the ship’s giant motors, but it’s like white noise to him. He is so used to it that it feels like comfort, now. The absolute silence of space and the faint hum of motors. It makes him feel quiet, too. The stillness, the slow movement of the ship, it makes the static in his head fall silent for once. It’s nice. 

The darkness of deep space makes him feel lighter, fuzzier around the edges. He feels less like a monster and more like he does not exist at all. Like the void inside him is just a part of the darkness outside his window. Like all he is is matter. No body, no mind, no pain. 

He closes his eyes and savors the stillness. His body doesn’t hurt. The wretched pull between light and dark is stilled and where there always was conflict, there is now peace. 

His eyes open in suspicion. Peace? Peace is too good. There has never been peace within him. Sure, there are moments when he is awake at night like this, letting himself dissolve into the space just beyond his window when he feels more… calm than usual, but never at peace. He is _never_ at peace. He reaches inside himself, tries to find the pull to the dark, to the light, anywhere, but he surfaces empty-handed. There is nothing. Inside him is perfect stillness. 

 _This must be a dream._  

The thought comes to him like he always knew. _This must be a dream._ It does not make sense, though. _I never sleep like this_. It’s true, he never dreams. It was years ago he decided that to keep himself together at all, together enough to do Snoke’s biddings, together enough to remember how to walk, talk and fly his ship, he needed to get rid of the nightmares that kept him awake for weeks at a time. Since then, every night before he goes to bed, he swallows two small capsules that grants him dreamless sleep. He never forgets them. He hasn’t dreamt in years. 

 _It must be a dream._ _But I never sleep like this._

He turns from the window and immediately stumbles backwards in shock. Someone is curled up on their side, covered in blankets, sleeping soundly in his bed. He is so shocked it takes a few seconds for him to recognize her. Rey. 

Rey is sleeping in his bed and he immediately thinks of their Force bond, but then he sees her clothes scattered around his room. Her tunic hangs from a chair by the desk. Her boots are slumped over by the door. He casts his eyes away quickly as they land on a breastband by the foot of the bed and he feels his heart pumping faster. This is not their Force bond. Her things are here, in his room on the _Supremacy_. _This must be a dream._  

He slowly takes in his surroundings. It’s his quarters, alright, but now that he scrutinizes them, he finds them slightly different. They look more… lived in, less pristine, more inviting somehow. Details are different, too. He moves around the room slowly not to wake Rey, whose presence he decides to investigate soon. He just needs to understand first. What this is, what it means. 

 _This must be a dream. But I never sleep like this._  

On his desk is a comb and three hair ties. They are not his. He pries open his drawer and finds clothes there, clothes that are not his. They are way too light, way too small and _messy_ , in a way he would never leave them. And they are clearly feminine. He closes the drawer again, thinking hard. _This must be a dream._ It must be his dream, too, because Rey wouldn’t know what his quarters looked like, not in detail, and he would never presume her to dream of living with _him._ He furrows his brow for a moment. If this is a dream, and it is his dream, then what does it mean that he dreams of her like this? Sleeping soundly, _safely_ , in his (their?) quarters, her things littering all over the place? 

He edges closer to the bed, studying her sleeping form. Her hair is loose and fans over the pillow. It’s longer than he imagined, it must reach well beneath her shoulders. He shakes his head, realizing he must have imagined her hair let down from her signature buns at some point. It’s ridiculous. 

He can hear her soft breathing over his furiously pumping heart. He is so close to her now, leaning over her, and he finds that he is curious of what her skin would feel like if he touched her cheek, but he doesn’t dare. He doesn’t want to wake her. 

He squats down by the bedside to look closer at her face. He studies her little nose, her freckles, her soft eyelashes which flutters ever so lightly. He has never found her to be exactly beautiful, but there is an undeniable sweetness about her features that somehow makes him ache. For what, he can’t tell. 

He suddenly notices the absence of another ache, a physical ache he should be feeling. His hands fly to his side, to the giant, uneven scar he has from being hit by Chewie’s blaster crossbow. His eyes widen as his hands dart under his shirt, because it is _not there._ He has too lift his shirt to look to believe it. Where there should be a great, patchy piece of unevenly healed, reddened skin is nothing. Undamaged skin, pale, a few freckles. His hands fly to his face and traces the scar that Rey gave him. He shouldn’t be surprised to find his face unharmed and smooth, just like it was before the fight in the forest, but he is. 

 _This must be a dream._  

He stands up again, staring at Rey as he slowly backs away from the bed. _This must be a dream._ Rey is sleeping in his bed. Rey is living here. They never fought in the forest by Starkiller Base. Chewie never shot him. He shuts his eyes hard and tries in vain to control his panicking breath, his racing heart as he realizes: _in this dream, I never killed Han Solo. I never killed my father._

 _Is this what I dream of?_ Maybe he should stop taking those sleeping capsules, if this is what he dreams of nowadays. Of peace, of not murdering… _my father_ (he tries to ignore the surge of feelings that arise with the memory), of being with Rey. He furrows his brow. He still doesn’t really understand why he dreams of her like this, though. 

He has another suspicion and moves to the door, and opens it to find an unfamiliar corridor, much smaller than that on the _Supremacy._ And then he remembers that the _Supremacy_ doesn’t exist anymore. It was split in half by the _Raddus_ jumping to hyperspace through it, and is probably still falling burning through space somewhere. He doesn’t recognize this ship’s interior at all. He closes the door again. 

He closes his eyes. He does not want to feel it, the ache that’s growing inside him. He doesn’t want to acknowledge what this is. 

 _This must be a dream._ _But I never sleep like this._  

He gingerly sits down at the edge bed, not to disturb Rey. A small, pale foot is sticking out from under the blankets and he pulls lightly at one corner to cover it. He gains control over his breath and his heart again as tiredness seeps through him. He would like to just fall asleep, just lie down, pull a blanket over his head and forget this, whatever it is, but his bed is occupied, and he does not want to wake her up. He does not want to face her rage, her disappointment, her disgust for him just now. 

But then again. _This is a dream_. Would he disgust her as much as he does, if he hadn’t killed his father? If he hadn’t nearly sliced her best friend in two? If all that had never happened… then what did? 

He decides he dare not find out. 

Finally, he gives in to some of the ache inside him and pushes a strand of her hair away from her face, tucks it behind her ear. She looks so peaceful in her sleep. He so wishes to join her but can’t find the nerve to do it. 

 _This must be a dream._  

Could he fall asleep _in his dream?_ He can’t remember ever dreaming about falling asleep before, but then again, he can’t remember dreaming about _anything_ normal. His dreams were usually a mixture of himself murdering everyone he ever cared about, and then being murdered by anyone he ever thought cared for him. That, and a good dose of explicit torture scenes where everyone he’d ever hurt came back to elicit pain from him in various creative ways. He used to wake up from screaming so hard he spat blood. 

This is a good dream. In comparison, it’s fucking _stellar_. 

That decides it. Remembering his past nightmares, he decides this dream can never reach those levels of horror even if Rey would wake up and hate him. Well, it could if she would proceed to slowly murder him, but somehow, he doesn’t think that this is that kind of dream. 

He kicks off his boots and pulls his shirt over his head. He debates for a second if it would be more… prudent to keep his trousers on but rules against it. He hates sleeping in clothes. And, to be fair, he is dying to feel her skin against his. He does not know where all these feelings of _want_ and _longing_ and _ache_ for her comes from, but he is done trying to make sense of this now. He stands, undressed, by the side of the bed for a second, takes a deep breath. Then he slides onto the bed and in under the blankets before he can change his mind. 

He can feel the heat radiating of Rey before he even touches her. She is lying on her side, back to him. When his fingers make contact with her waist, a jolt goes through him that makes the hairs on his arm stand up. His heart is beating again as he remembers the breastband on the floor. He fights an impulse to jump away from her and go find a couch or something to sleep on, and reminds himself. _This is a dream._ _It’s not real_. Rey is sleeping in his bed. She is evidently here on her own accord. They never fought on Starkiller Base. This isn’t the _Supremacy._  

 _Fuck it, fuck all, fuck everything_ is what flies through his head as he throws caution to the wind. He closes the space between them and wraps himself around her. He buries his face in her hair. He tangles his legs with hers. She smells so good and feels _so good_ , so incredibly fucking _perfect_ in his arms and the ache he has been trying not to acknowledge, not to materialize into thought is now so powerful he can’t hold it off any more. He doesn’t want this to be a dream. He does not want this to be a fantasy that will always be to short, never last long enough. 

He wants this to be real. He wants this to be _so_ real. Waking up from this dream… _It’s going to be the death of me._  

He screws up his face and clutches Rey closer to him. Presses his lips to her shoulder. Tries not to fall asleep, willing this dream to last forever. 

Rey writhes in her sleep. 

He is snapped out of his thoughts and freezes as Rey turns in his arms, rolling over on her back. She smacks her lips in her sleep once, twice. Her nearest hand falls onto his shoulder, then lands on his cheek. He lies perfectly still, frozen in panic. 

Rey’s eyes open a fraction and she blinks, sleepy eyes meeting his. He thinks his heart is going to fail any moment and he has no fucking idea what to do. Then, a smile spread across her face and her fingers caress his face. His heart is beating in lightspeed. 

She turns again, this time right into his arms. She sighs as she settles herself against his chest, tucks her head beneath his chin, sneaks one arm around his waist. She presses three small kisses onto his chest and he can feel her smiling against him. She mumbles something he almost misses. When his brain finally processes what she has said, he has to ask her again. 

“Sorry?” He believes his voice has never been so soft and it’s quavering. He can feel Rey smiling again, and she gives his chest more kisses, and then she tilts her head up just a little and he tilts his down and he looks into her eyes. They’re sleepy and hazel and _warm_ and he remembers something he has long forgotten, a summers day, and his mother gives him warm milk with honey. 

He could lose himself forever in Rey’s eyes of warm milk and honey. 

“Love you” she mumbles, sleep getting hold of her again. He watches her face as she drifts off to sleep again, her breath getting slow and even and deep.

 

 

Ben Solo lies awake in his dream for a long time, Rey sleeping soundly in his arms. He presses soft kisses to the top of her head. He plays absent mindedly with her hair. His fingers lightly caress the soft skin on her back. A few times, he has to lean back a little to look at her face again, to make sure it’s still her. 

He isn’t thinking about anything now. He knows this must end and so he savors every second of it. He nuzzles her hair, drawing in the smell of her, of soap and something warm and dry that he associates with sand in the sun. He has never felt this way before. He feels soft and warm and safe. Soft and warm and safe, like sunshine and milk with honey. 

Ben Solo smiles a little and closes his eyes. He lets his lips rest on her forehead. 

When he finally falls asleep, it’s with the notion that for the first time since that day in the summer, when the sun was shining and moths buzzed in the air like tiny spacecrafts and his mother smiled at him, handing him a cup, he is happy. He is loved.  

 


End file.
